2013 Series 7 chronos / Ativ Book 8 15" owner's lounge (NP770Z5E / NP780Z5E / NP870Z5E / NP880Z5E)

Thanks John, yup, thankfully it wasn't worse. I'm away from home this week so ill try and find a reputable repair shop when i get back to see what they can do. Ill probably open it up first to see if i could mend it myself. It still works so I plan on getting this done soon, before the connector gets ruined. Thanks for the advice.

 

What do you guys think about the driver support for the 770z5e in the next 1-2years ?
I remeber that Samsung had a very bad support for this model on it first weeks/months.


EDIT:
i remember the very anoying auto brightness settings on display an backlit Keyboard.... Did any driver or Bios Update fixed this Problem ? I want to upgrade to Windows 8.1 U2 but i don't know if samsung drivers supports this windows version....

 

Hi folks, I´ve an Ativbook 8 (NP880Z5E-X01UB) and yesterday I updated the SW Updater and It sugested a BIOS update. During the process the computer halted and after an one hour wait I had to reboot the laptop. When i rebooted the laptop was bricked. I tried to download a bios image from samsung website but I could not find. Could someone upload the last BIOS image for me? thanks a lot!!!

 

Here is a picture of the inside:
The HDMI port is definitely soldered to the motherboard

 

Go to the sticky list and browse through the 4 threads relating to BIOS issues.

One of those threads relates to bricking problems. There was an epidemic of them just after the Windows 8 notebooks were first shipped but someone else had a problem similar to yours very recently.

If none of the resurrection tricks works for you then I suggest you request Samsung to fix your notebook irrespective of whether you are out of warranty. It was working fine until their SW Update tried to do the BIOS update. Sensible it would direct you to the separate BIOS update program which is less troublesome.

John

 

I still have the problem with the screen bright and the ghosting on the screen...im waiting to the end of this holidays in Chile to send my laptop to samsung's technical support

 

Hi, I´ve bricked my NP880Z5E-X01UB yesterday using the dam Samsung SW Update. During the Bios update the software freezed at 17%, and everything (mouse, keyboard etc) became non responsive. I´ve already tried to unplug the batteries (main and 3V backup) with no success. After the reboot the only thing a I see is a black screen. Now I´m trying to find a working firmware (ROM file) to flash it on the IC with an eprom writer. I´ve read a lot of threads here but I just can´t get the ROM file. I was at P03ADH and was trying to update to P05ADH when the laptop crashed. I´ve tried the procedure in the _Samsung_Update folder but simply the files are not being extracted there even if I don´t click ok or cancel. Could anyone send me the P03ADH (preferably as it was working fine before) or P05ADH rom file? thanks a lot

 

Hi, it´s me again, as long as I´m going to program the rom straight to the memory, what I really need is the ROM file, read from the BIOS, not the CAP file. If someone has a backup of this files or could save the current ROM please send me this precious file... thanks again

 

Please advise how someone can create this ROM file.

John

 

I've just managed to UNBRICK my ativbook 8. I posted the details in the BIOS roll back thread for those who are interested. It can be found here.

 

I'll try one more time

Has anyone managed to get above 76hz on an external monitor?

 

I'm curious about this too. I am quite looking forward to Windows 9 and am still very pleased with my 780Z5E but we all know how finicky this device is re: video drivers because of the hybrid Intel/ATI graphics. This has been my first Samsung notebook. How is Samsung at providing basic driver support for popular notebooks over time and OS updates? Hopefully there won't be any significant changes to the driver model so that Windows 8.1 drivers will continue working fine but you never know. Forced obsolescence is a wonderful way to drive the hardware market and MS has helped out its partners in this regard in the past.

 

hey guys,

Are are you getting of with widi on the ativ book 8?

Asking this because the other day I updated widi to latest version along with something else from intel (?wifi driver I think) and got it working as it's supposed on 8.1, ie going to charms menu, etc.
BUT, it lagged terribly even tough I was right in front of the router which is using 144 Mbps...started digging a bit and found that it would be due to a stupid limitation of 8.1 of only getting 30 Hz on Widi...

Saw that installing widi from windows 7, V3.5.4 would solv the problem, but after setting it to compat mode with win 7 (or else it wouldn't work at all), it just tells me to download the latest widi drivers, no alllowing me to do nothing else...

So, is there any way of Widi doesn't sucking at 8.1 on our laptops?

ps: latest official intel gpu won't install due to our "greatly appreciated" OEM...;

 

Has anybody figured out how to update the Intel HD 4000 graphics drivers and still get their brightness settings to work? I did a clean uninstall of the Intel HD 4000 drivers installed by Samsung for Win8.1, installed the latest Iris drivers offered by Intel then installed the brightness patch again and no luck on the brightness. I had to revert back to SW Update provided Intel drivers.

 

Hey community,
I have the Samsung NP880Z5E and have a severe problem with it.
It is EXTREMELY slow, it freezes often as soon as I open 2 or more programs (e.g. Excel and Firefox) or just do other real basic stuff. Sometimes just watching a youtube video or opening two tabs in Firefox is too much too handle.. Then I have to open the task manager (which also take about 2-3 minutes then) to close it manually. Also the utilization of the HDD which is displayed in the task manager is at a 100%, although I'm just working in a word document/surfing the web..
While playing games its fine (e.g. I've just tried WatchDogs - runs okay), just the real basic things seem to be a problem. I honestly don't know what to do, I paid 1200€ for this thing, so I would expect those tasks to be handled quickly and easily, although the HDD is not the fastest.. has anyone experienced the same problems and found a solution?

Thanks a lot for your help!

 

Did anyone solve this installation issue? I can't update both bluetooth and audio drivers, as prompted by swupdate, because installation fails all the times...

 

Go to your favorite search engine and type in "Windows high disk utilization".

You shoud find plenty of hits. This, for example. Work through the various suggested fixes to discover what works for you.

John

 

There is a registry key (search for "FeatureTestControl") that you need to set to 0xFFFF. Restart your computer after the change, and you'll get your brightness settings back regardless of what driver version you're on. It seems that new drivers will sometimes set this value to 0x0, which turns off brightness settings. Anyways, it works on Win8, and should work the same for Win8.1.

See if you have something called Intellimemory installed. Uninstall it and see if that helps.

As far as screen ghosting issues are concerned, Samsung doesn't seem to have a newer, better panel available yet. I sent in my laptop to get the screen replaced a week ago, and the screen is the same component and actually ghosts worse than the old part. For what it's worth, my previous panel's ghosting actually seemed to get better over time, and I'm hoping that it's the case with my new screen.

 

OK I solved failing bluetooth driver upgrade. I saved installation file locally I unistalled previous bluetooth Intel drivers then I ran the installation file with admin rights (the one inside x64 folder).
Still investigating on audio drivers. I can't find installation file to download.

 

First, I apologize for my horrible English.
I do not know if anyone else suffers from this problem but just in case, I present here with its corresponding solution. If anyone has / had the same problem please let me know:

I have installed an additional module ram, ( 16gb total) in my ativbook 8 (NP870Z5E-X01PT). I have not had time to put the ssd with corresponding clean installation, but I have everything clean of bloatware, uninstalled unnecessary/junk programs, etc ...
Among the junk programs uninstalled is the intellimemory (produce excessive consumption of RAM). However, nothing start Windows without opening any program, ram consumption was around 7gb. As with any open autocad plane, the browser, and photoshop, consumption soared to 13-14gb.
In short, I had an excessive consumption of RAM without reason.

After much asking around I found the solution by chance in this forum
The solution is basically to search in the registry this route:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\ControlSet001\Services\ Ndu

Within this route there is a value called ''Start'' which by default is 2, is changed to 4, restart and excessive consumption of ram is resolved.

The problem is caused by the Windows Network Data Usage Monitoring Driver (Ndu):
% WinDir%\system32\drivers\Ndu.sys
This service Provides network data usage monitoring functionality.
This service exists only in Windows 8.


Looks like some kind of Driver to monitor data usage by network, guess what you spend each application and so on.
What explains the link is that apparently this driver conflicts with the network adapter and a bug causing memory leaks uncontrollably. Apparently another solution is to reinstall Windows and let himself look for update drivers for network adapter driver, rather than through the SW update.

Now when I start Windows, consumption does not exceed the 2GB and where consumption was 13/14gb, now not passing 4/5gb with same open programs.

Please, let me know if anyone else has exaggerated consumption of ram. I can only assume I'm not the only user of an ativbook 8 with this problem, but as I say the problem it can be solved or occasioned depending on the network driver installed / updated.

.

 

Thanks so much, this absolutely fixed my problem. I'm not using the latest Intel HD Iris 4000 drivers with working brightness bar. Here are the registry keys I needed to change

Just save the above info in a .reg file and run it. Probably good to make a backup of those keys before you do, but it all seemed to work perfectly for me on an NP880Z5E on Win 8.1 x64. Anyway we can add this info to the first post? I think it's very relevant.

 

Has anyone already tried new catalyst 14.9 whql officially supporting radeon mobility hd8000 series?

 

I have, it works pretty well and it finally fixed the texture problem in cs:go. Still the same bug where yo need to change power plan/unplug but it performs better than 14.4 and it seems more stable.


Also, my 1000th post

 

So who dares to install the new Windows 10 preview on their machine?

I'll just stick to a virtualbox for the moment .

 

I was hoping to be the first to ask this.

I think I will try on the weekend after creating a Recovery backup. I sure would like to know other folks' experiences before I take the dive, though. MS is reporting that hardware that works in Windows 8 will be fully supported so theoretically...

 

I guess that everything will work just fine as well. I think the biggest updates on Windows 10 are more visual and functional, the kernel is not that much modified.

 

My thoughts as well. I've got a USB stick ready to go... I created an Acronis backup of the disk and can't recall whether Acronis works okay when just restoring the boot partition. Recovery takes a loooong time to backup as compared to Acronis and i've already got that backup created. Thoughts?

 

Just be aware that if you restore that Acronis image, Samsung Recovery will mostly like be destroyed on the disk you restore to. If you have other backups of your Recovery (an original HDD or a bootable factory image backup) that may be acceptable to you.

If the SRS factory image backup takes excessively long time to create, that is often a sign that the USB stick is one that isn't SRS compatible.

Check my post quoted in the OP for more details on that. I'd give you a link to the post (my post with the guide, not the OP of course ) but am currently away from my pc.

Edit:
The post containing the steps to create a bootable factory image backup (Recovery backup), including advice on selecting a compatible USB stick, can be found here (that was a link).

 

Did you get a chance to see if any of the known issues affect you? I'm namely curious about the problem with horizontal bars when hooking up to a second monitor/projector.
Edit: I went and tested it. At least through HDMI, there seems to be no problems. Haven't tested VGA.

So... I went and installed the 14.9 WHQL. I am also now a 1337 w4ll h4x0r. I'm on the model with the 8870, and am curious to hear how you might have installed 14.9 without this problem. In the meantime I guess I'm back to 14.4

 

Same problem here. 8870M and 14.9 causing transparent textures in some Games...

 

Thanks Dan - if I am just restoring the c: partition, there shouldn't be an issue with Acronis, should there? Or does render the recovery partition inaccessible?

 

You're right, I believe that should be OK. I do that myself all the time, using a different (older) imaging tool.

I would still recommend you have a backup of Recovery as well: Many people who clean installed Win8.1 found that it borked their Recovery. And (as you know) that's where you don't want to use 3rd party imaging tools.

Did that factory image you were making finally complete? Have you had a chance to test that it boots alright?

 

Hey Dan - I actually hadn't started to make the image - I just looked at the estimated time and decided to go Acronis.

I have installed the Technical Preview as an upgrade install and everything is working just fine. The only sort-of-bug is the wheel on my bluetooth mouse (el cheapo Asus mouse) isn't working consistently. Other than some of the icons from 3rd party apps rendering roughly, it is running well. The existing AMD and Intel display drivers were maintained so the hybrid graphics appear to be working as intended.

Update: After the successful update, I discovered that at least one of the samsung apps no longer worked (SW Update) and I wasn't planning on keeping the technical preview on my laptop anyways, so I successfully restored the system partition from an Acronis backup and lived to tell it.

My overall impression of the Tech Preview at this point? Meh...

 

I couldn't fix it, so rolled back to 14.4. However, if you must use 14.9, try alt-tabbing in and out of source engine games. Seems to fix it until the renderer is reinitialized when you start a new round.

 

I can't run FIFA 15 without heavy stuttering... I've tried those Catalyst Settings (VSync Enabled, multithreading optimization disabled, and OpenGL Tripple Buffering disabled) but it seems to do nothing.

I'm on AMD 14.9 WHQL drivers.

Anyone got the same problem as me?

 

Yeah, MS said the same thing about Windows 8.1, and I still borked my Chronos and had to swap in the original factory HDD, clone it off to my SSD, and start over from scratch afterwards. Seeing as I still haven't managed to figure out how to get the latest Bluetooth and Audio drivers provided by Samsung to install, I'm probably going to hold off on the tech preview for Windows 10 for now. Even if it works correctly with the current build, MS will be pushing newer builds/updates to it regularly and that could break things.

 

Interesting. I've only been running it inside of a VM, but I actually like it quite a bit better than 8 or 8.1 so far. Did you get a chance to test graphics/gaming performance with it before reverting?

It's good to hear that just cloning/restoring the C: partition seems to work. As far as SW update goes, I can't tell you the last time that I saw anything pushed via SW update that a) I wanted on the system and b) actually installed properly in the first place.

It is pretty disappointing that Samsung seems to go out of their way to ensure that every piece of software that they write is hard-coded to work only for a specific version of the OS. Microsoft is now getting into the rhythm of putting out a major OS update every year, if not more often, and the system requirements haven't changed since the days of Vista. In theory we should able able to just keep installing updates as they come available just like I do for my home-built desktop PC, but for some reason Samsung wants all the headaches of playing gatekeeper.

I will definitely think twice before buying another Samsung computer, no matter how great they look.

 

Hi there guys,

so i just purchased a 24" monitor and i wanted to ask whether the display would use the intel hd graphics or the dedicated 8870m on the screen.
Are the any special settings that improve the experience?
I also heard that there have been problems with hdmi and monitors, but couldnt find it again.

Any help and advice is appreciated,
BKKJul

 

It will will use the Intel or the AMD exactly the same as the internal LCD, based on your Switchable Graphics configuration. Driving the screen(s) is a process (handled by the Intel chipset and some clock circuitry) separate from the 3D processing of the two GPUs.

I don't think you should have any problems with external HDMI monitors, at least up to 1920x1200@60Hz resolution and possibly even higher. The problems that some have had are driving 2560x1440 and above at 60Hz, often on monitors that only have DisplayPort or Dual-DVI inputs. Check member Ansap's posts here and here.

 

Have any of you recently installed something like "graphic switcher" or anything along those lines via SW update? I did it because there was a few games that refused to use radeon, so I thought this might help.

Nope. Instead, now my 8870m is working all the time from the moment pc boots. I cannot turn it off, even the silent mode doesn't help. CCC does not show any apps using this gpu. To make things worse, SW update doesn't even give me the history of this update, It's like it never happened, so I can't find/uninstall it. Now my portability is gone, the temperatures never drop below 60..

Anyone in the same boat?

 

Thanks Dan

Ive had a similar problem latly, that after gaming, the card just wouldnt switch back the intel, checking with msi afterburner , it was running 99% usage and the fan was going mad.
The only way to turn it off was to go into control panel and under display adapters, disable the gpu until you need it next time.
Until now i thought it was because i installed machaters tool, but maybe it was this.

 

Hey guys,

does anyone know if the image retention is still there with the Ativ Book 8 NP870Z5E-X04?

I want to buy this one for my girlfriend, my Serie 7 Chronos NP770Z5E does have the image retention.

Thank you!

 

Anyone found a solution to cpu throttling? Enduro fix seems to work as my GPU doesn't go below 99% when used, but the cpu clocks are also important for some games or software.

 

Have you tried setting the power settings to high performance. Then check if the minimum and maximum power states are set to 100%. You find that in Control Pane -> power options -> advanced plan settings - > processor power management and then check the states. Just remember to set it back to samsung optimized later as it can get quite hot after a while, but so far i havent had it in dangerous levels of temperature.

Then you can use HWinfo64 and check at which speed the 4 cores are clocking. at 100% should be 3xxx Mhz most of the time.

That helped me in solving my issues, hope it does the same for you.

 

Can some one please help me with my laptop I have an ativ book 8 with windows 8.1 and an ssd installed. Ever since I installed an ssd and updated to windows 8.1 when my laptop goes into sleep mode and I try exit sleep mode my laptop turns on and then shuts off immediately thus losing all my work that I was saving for later. Anyone had this problem after updating to win 8.1?

 

Hi All,

After upgrading my 770Z to windows 8.1, SW update always shows "Windows 8.1 Brightness Patch Program" as needing to update. I've installed and restarted this many times. Is this happening to anyone else, and is there a fix?

Thanks
David

 

Great information on here. I'm a new Book 8 owner and love it so far. One problem, though, is that my graphics are all locked on power saving even though global setting are on high or maximum peformance.

Here's my response from AMD:

I emailed AMD because I tried to download the AMD graphics as instructed on the first post in this thread and it didn't work:

It took me to this page "Download not Complete": Download Not Complete

Any suggestions?

 

Hi guys,

im going to upgrade to windows 8.1 now. I cannot take these wifi disconnects anymore, nothing seems to fix them.

Is it ok just upgrade to 8.1, or is it better to do full clean install?

Also if i do go to 8.1, what do i need to watch out for with drivers?

Thanks in advance

 

I have resolved the wifi disconnects by replacing the intel wifi with atheros AR9462 (bluetooth + wifi MIMO 2x2) from ebay for like $20, works flawlessly.

I recommend doing clean install from widnows 8.1 install media